Curtain up on a revolution

The dear old Chichester Festival has shocked everyone by putting cutting-edge director Steven Pimlott in charge with two colleagues. He unveils their plans for the first season to Charles Spencer - and reveals a surprising passion

A man with a plan: Steven Pimlott

Charles Spencer

12:01AM GMT 13 Feb 2003

When the press release arrived announcing the new artistic directorship of the Chichester Festival Theatre, I feared I might be the victim of a practical joke.

Chichester's audience is probably the oldest and most conservative of any theatre in the country. And who had the board appointed? Only three of the most cutting-edge talents working in British theatre today.

At the Nottingham Playhouse, the artistic director Martin Duncan and the executive director (and ubiquitous arts committee woman) Ruth Mackenzie were responsible for a wildly eclectic programme that included such international talents as Robert Lepage, Luc Bondy, Silviu Purcarete, Stephane Braunschweig and Botho Strauss. These guys may be big in broadsheet arts pages, but they aren't the kind of names to set pulses racing in West Sussex.

And then there is Steven Pimlott, for many years an associate director of the RSC, where his productions included a modern-dress Richard II played in a white box and an Antony and Cleopatra that kicked off with Alan Bates and Frances de la Tour enjoying an energetic bout of oral sex. He has also championed the frankly baffling plays of Phyllis Nagy.

Chichester has been struggling from crisis to crisis in recent years. Wasn't this a spectacular piece of miscasting that could close the theatre down for good?

So I went to see Pimlott, 49, in his enviable Covent Garden flat. I was expecting a somewhat frosty welcome, because I haven't always been kind about his work, but left an hour later persuaded that, far from being an act of lunacy, the appointment of this unconventional triumvirate of artistic directors might be just what's needed to save Chichester from the theatrical equivalent of osteoporosis.

The plans are bold, but they aren't alienating. The new directors have drawn up their first season following consultations with 2,000 local people. And Mackenzie, an old hand at the arts funding game, following stints at both the Arts Council and as special adviser to the Culture Secretary, has managed to persuade the funding bodies to wipe out a scary accumulated deficit of £2.2 million, so that the new regime can start on a level playing field.

I put it to Pimlott that he, Duncan and Mackenzie seemed an unlikely trio to run Chichester. "Mmm," he said, without rancour. "I suppose that might be true. The thing that is very appealing about Chichester - and I know it has a bit of a funny reputation - is that it has a rather remarkable core audience, a very theatre-literate and very faithful audience. Even though it has been declining over the past few years [last year attendances in the main house were down to 42 per cent], Chichester still plays to nearly 1,000 people a night, which is a lot of people outside London. The idea of going there, being fairly adventurous and recapturing the festival spirit of the early days under Olivier, all seemed very attractive."

The triumvirate's plans, revealed for the first time here, are to have an ensemble company of about 60 actors and 12 musicians, cast across eight productions in the main house and the Minerva studio. The theme of the first festival will be Venice, though it isn't being allowed to become a strait-jacket.

The Festival Theatre will kick off with Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers (remarkably, this will be the first time G&S has featured in the festival season) to be followed by The Merchant of Venice. Then there will be two productions with aqueous themes - a musical version of Charles Kingsley's weird Victorian children's classic The Water Babies, followed by Pimlott directing a production of Chekhov's The Seagull, with its lakeside setting. In the Minerva there will be a rare production of Gotthold Lessing's Nathan the Wise (1779), a plea for religious tolerance which is likely to strike some extremely topical chords.

This will be followed by a new play by the excellent (and undervalued) Robert Holman about a 15-year-old junkie, a companion piece to The Water Babies, and two more Venetian shows - Rainer Werner Fassbinder's adaptation of a Goldoni comedy The Coffee House (translated by Jeremy Sams) and the comedy duo the Brothers Marquez with their own devised show about Venice.

There will also be a big promenade production of Pinocchio, performed by more than 100 local children, fun days in the park, and late-night cabaret in the revamped restaurant, which will have a late licence.

All the productions will remain in rep once they have opened, so that by August all eight shows will be running concurrently, with a chance to see them all at festival weekends. Like Hytner at the National, Pimlott and co are also slashing prices. A premium season ticket for top seats at every show will cost less than £16 a production, and Friends will be able to see all eight shows for £48.50 - that's about £6 a time.

"If people don't come at these prices, then we'll know we have a problem," says Pimlott.

It strikes me as a canny season. As the RSC's successful Jacobethan season has proved, there is a great public appetite for following the same group of actors through different plays and roles. The only downside is that it means there are likely to be few of the star names traditionally regarded as crucial at Chichester.

Pimlott also promises a "spectacular installation" in the main house which will be a design constant in all four productions there. It involves water, to reflect the season's Venetian theme, and I just hope we won't be reading news stories about a flooded theatre.

Pimlott, who began his career directing opera at ENO almost as soon as he graduated from Cambridge, is a hard man to pigeonhole. Over the years his work has ranged from the conceptual avant-garde to unashamedly populist musicals such as Dr Dolittle and Bombay Dreams, from high opera to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I've described him as schizophrenic in his artistic tastes and he cheerfully admits to once being described as "the Jekyll and Hyde of Opera".

"My first theatre experiences as a child were Richard III and The King and I, and in a way I've always had an equal passion for them both. The fact is I don't feel like a different person whether I'm doing Joseph, Boheme or Hamlet. It's all about telling stories - though it is a bit odd, I suppose."

To add further to his identity crisis, Pimlott plays oboe in a variety of bands, and has kept in his hand as an actor. He recently popped up in Midsomer Murders on television and is currently starring as Sir Joseph Porter in Martin Duncan's hugely enjoyable revival of HMS Pinafore for D'Oyly Carte at the Savoy.

"Where does all that fit in?" he asks, as if a touch perplexed himself. "As a G&S anorak, the idea of going on at the Savoy is just amazing - like a Wagner fan singing at Bayreuth. It's a dream come true."

I just hope his ambitious dreams for Chicester come true, too. The stakes are high, but despite my initial forebodings, I have a hunch that the gamble might pay off handsomely.